We love cruising and all of the benefits that it brings me and my wife in exploring the world, from been able to see many countries on one holiday to been able to visit some of the most remote places on earth.

You also get to travel with people from all over the world and gain an albeit small insight in cultures you had little knowledge of.

Me and my wife are not ones for sitting on the beach for days on end or for staying in a big holiday resort but if we are to do a land holiday, we much prefer to head to a big city where we can explore using local metro systems or head to an out of the way place full of wildlife and natural beauty.

On a cruise, we don’t need to choose between the two as do both on a the same itinerary and plenty more as well.

No matter what type of holiday we choose to do, from staycations to short haul city breaks and from long haul adventures to cruises, we understand that there are some issues with it, but the same can be said whenever you leave your house.

That is not to play down any of the issues in this post as we are well aware that these are ongoing issues for the cruise industry and something that the industry as a whole need to improve on.

In this list we take you through some of the biggest issues we have with cruising, discuss our problems with it and also what is being or not being done to improve the issue in an article we have called, The Dark Side of Cruising- A Discussion.

The Dark Side of Cruising

No matter what you do from day to day, their will be an impact on the environment but of course somethings are worse than others.

It is also something that some ports are clamping down on and others are working with the industry improve, so this is an area the industry as a whole is doing some good stuff with.

From a personnel point of view, we are always conscious of the emissions of the ship, you really cannot miss it coming out of the funnels but with less heavy fuels been used and technology improving things from a usage point of view, this is something that is getting better and better.

Ship to shore power will really help the impact on ports from ships been there in terms of emissions and floating piers will also helps ships from having to drop anchors and damaging ecosystems.

Wastewater, solid waste, single use plastics and food waste are all major issues that you just cannot ignore and thankfully most line are starting to wake up to the problems and are making changes.

This is something that is as much of a societal issue as it is a cruise industry, but it just gets magnified onboard a cruise ship where people are living at close quarters for long periods of time.

Aside from the people who are just not willing to learn, recent events have been a big wake up call for most of us and we have seen big improvements on most ships we have sailed on since 2019.

One area we do like is the addition of handwashing stations in most buffets nowadays instead of just handwash.

Our preferred liens have also made changes to their check in process and to their muster drills so that people don’t have to spend time crowding in groups, which helps with a lot of issues and is now frustrating when you sail with a line who haven’t adapted.

Illness outbreaks are still an issue, with the dreaded norovirus still dreaded by cruisers.

Seafaring has always been a tough life and always will be as you need to work long hours for long periods of time and be away from home for long periods.

With lines expecting so much, it is disappointing to see so many use shell companies and flags of conveniences to get around having to give the sort of protections, conditions and pay that would be expected by the vast majority of those cruising on the ship.

There have been some improvements to this, and the onboard conditions have gotten much better recently but there are still massive discrepancies between the staff from developing nations who mostly works behind the scenes and those that are from more developed countries.

This is something that really does change from line to line and even ship to ship but with some of the ships we have sailed on recently having tired and overworked staff, it is something that is impacting cruisers holidays and that just cannot be ignored by lines any longer.

This is something that everyone will experience when they book a cruise as it is constant almost across the board in the industry and sadly it is the entry on this with the least been done about it by the industry.

We learnt straightaway when we took our first cruise that we needed to track the price of a cruise ourselves as you just cannot believe anything you get from the line.

One day, you can check a cruise and at full price it is x amount, you then get an email to say there is a 30% off sale starting today, you check and the price is actually more than it was at full price.

Yes, this is something that impacts every industry and especially in a predominately American based industry, but it does seem worse in the cruise industry and seems to be in every aspect of it.

One of the worse things for us was a cruise line who website booking process was broke so we couldn’t book online but when we rang up to book, it cost far more than their own website was showing.

Another big incident was when we rang a line to sort out some issues with excursions and after around 20-25 minutes of been on the line and then just trying to get us to buy upgrades, I literally had to ask him to stop trying to sell us stuff and either allow us to book what we wanted or let us go and book elsewhere.

It doesn’t matter if you book direct, via an online travel agent or a real-world travel agent, you will get bombarded with sales that aren’t sales, upgrades that aren’t really upgrades and packages you don’t want more that would only cost you more in the long run anyway.

A lot of this one is down to me and wife been big planners for holidays and my wife been someone who is very details orientated and likes to know what is happening and when.

With that in mind, it is strange to use just how much some cruise lines like to hide from you or not tell you until it is far too late to be of use.

A family member of mine is has just booked there first cruise and had plenty of questions for me, but it was with a line we had never sailed with.

I could give him some answers based on our past experience of cruising but other things I would have to look up and I just couldn’t find the answers anywhere on the website of the line he was sailing with.

Our personnel worst case was with a visit to a country the majority onboard would need a visa for. As ever there were a few options including a transit visa and a short stay visa.

The short stay one allowed dual entry and was the one the immigration service of the country said you needed, so we got the visa and plenty of people we heard from who also sailed on the cruise had gotten as well.

The line had said they couldn’t give advice on this, so we went with what we understood we needed for a cost of around £50 each. About 3 weeks before sailing, the line emailed to say that we needed to have the other type of visa to board, which led to lots of announce, lots of worry and lots of phone calls for many of these cruising onboard.

In the end, the line were wrong and that lack of transparency and communication just caused more problems than needed but they still manage to promote a visa service (very expensive to do free things for you).

This is something that the industry never really wants to discuss and in many ways, you can’t blame them.

Cruise ships are floating cities and sadly apart of that is crime but whilst cruise ships are relatively safe for the amount of people that sail on them, problems occur and from time to time people go missing.

When you have a few thousand people all relaxing, enjoying themselves and many with an unlimited drinks package and you are going to get some of the problems that comes with that and just like in any town centre, people can leave a bar or restaurant and never be seen again.

The thing that I can never get my head around is that on a cruise ship, there is always somebody watching with CCTV everywhere and you of course always have to scan in and off of the ship.

So whenever somebody goes missing and cruise ships claim to helping with enquires but they are not sure if the person was onboard or not and it just doesn’t seem quite right.

Right, I’ll take my tin foil hat off now!

This is one of those things that nobody wants to think about, but it does happen, and probably a lot more often than you think.

If you are near to land, the ship will head to the nearest port but if you are out to sea, the deceased may travel with you until you get to your next port of call or your homeport.

With the lifetime of debt you will leave your family if this happens to you, make sure you have decent travel insurance!

I am sure most will be well aware that cruise ship is registered to countries that they will likely never even visit and that is something known as using a flag of convenience.

There are many issues with this and many reasons for cruise lines to use them but whilst many are problematic but don’t impact the cruise experience directly, such as lower tax rates and less jurisdictional complexities, some are things that should be on cruisers minds.

Depending on the country the ship is registered in there could be less stringent safety tests and inspections, less safety regularity enforcement, more lenient environmental laws and more exploitation risk to staff.

We have noticed quite a shift over the past decade or so from ships using countries with poor human rights records to at least using countries such as Malta with much better working condition expectations.

A lot of the issues with these are being challenge by the cruise ports that the ships visit, so they are having to improve as an industry, but there is still a long way to go.

This isn’t just a problem for the cruising industry, but it is something that is an issue for many cruise tourist destinations and something that isn’t an easy issue to solve.

For the purpose of this article, I will just focus on the biggest issues surrounding this for the cruise industry and to be honest it is mostly of its own making.

As cruise ships get bigger and bigger and as they pack on more and more people, ports of call just cannot cope with that influx.

When you then get more than one behemoth of the sea in a relatively small port, you have problems for cruiser sand problems for locals.

Those visiting on the ship cannot get to see the real destination and experience what they want to do as everywhere is crowed with fellow travellers and ever attraction has a massive queue.

For those living locally, they just cannot go around their everyday life as the pedestrian are packed, roads are blocked up with coaches and shops are crowded.

The answer is relatively simple but incredibly expensive so it won’t get sorted, but if the industry can develop more ports, organise schedules so fewer ships are in smaller ports at the same time and try to use fewer coaches, it will have a big impact in a short time.

If like us you love to plan your days ashore to make the time you have in each port, you will likely have tried to pack in as much as possible.

Anybody who has travelled before will know that things happen and plans often need to be changed but whilst some things are out of the control of everyone, such as weather and medical emergencies, some things are well in control of the ships and lines you sail with, but they will always choose what’s best for them.

Sadly, that is something that happens far far too often and whilst it mostly just impacts your plans, onboard changes can quickly ruin a whole day’s plan.

We have had first hand experience of this on more than one occasion with the worst case coming on a visit to the Indian port of Kochi.

We were scheduled for an overnight stay as we would arrive at midday on the first day and then leave late afternoon on the second day.

We booked a ship excursion on the first day so allow us plenty of time on the second day to explore on our own but upon arriving in our cabin on the first day, a note had been left to tell us that the shore excursion had been switch to the second day in the city.